Dress Rehearsal
by sagdragon3002
Summary: Yuna, Paine, and Rikku all mastered changing and using their Dresspheres in one take, right? Of course. Absolutely. Chapter 3 out of 18 posted.
1. Gunner

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X-2 doesn't belong to me. If it did, there would be so much more Auron in it. Like, the so-called "Perfect-Ending" (which I haven't actually seen yet) would have Auron come back, instead of just a certain someone else. But, 'tis a rant for another day.

And just when I thought I have scaled back on all the WIPs, I decide to start another one. However, this one takes the back-burner to _Crash-Course Parenting_, so sorry if you like this one especially. I'll update this sporadically until I finish CCP. If it helps, I already know there will be 18 chapters...

Summary: Yuna, Paine, and Rikku all mastered changing and using their Dresspheres in one take, right? Of course. Absolutely. Except...not.

* * *

**_Gunner--The DarknessFalls Upon Our Heroes, Oh My!_**

"I've spotted the fiend!" Yuna shouted to her companions, hopping off a ledge and into the path of three skinks.

"Great! Now I can show you guys how to really use one of these!" Rikku told Yuna and Paine, lightly brushing aside the side-skirt of the Gunner Dressphere.

"So, which one do I shoot first?" Paine added, cocking her gun.

The skinks swayed from side to side, seemingly dispassionate toward the gunners. This only enabled the trio to creep closer to the fiends.

"We've got this one in the bag," Rikku giggled, holding her gun's point down as she prepared to fire.

"Alright, follow my lead," Yuna whispered. "I'll fire one shot, Paine shoots next, and if it still hasn't passed on, Rikku, you use Trigger Happy. Repeat until they're all gone. Okay?"

"Got it," Paine nodded.

"Okay, just let me . . . get . . . the gun . . . fixed," Rikku pulled the safety back.

What next happened foreshadowed their luck for the next several days.

_Bang!_

"_Ow!_"

"Ooh, ooh, Paine, I'm so sorry!" Rikku hopped from one foot to the other, circling the girl cautiously. "I thought I had the safety on!"

"Rikku, the cliché is, 'don't shoot _yourself_ in the foot' not _others_!" Paine groused, bent to one knee as she inspected her foot. The bullet had grazed her boot, leaving only friction behind.

"Sorry!" Rikku moaned, hands splayed on her face.

"Are you okay, Paine?" Yuna inquired, hovering over the dark-haired woman.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Paine shook out her foot, rising. "Let's just kill the fiend, so I can shoot Rikku."

"Heh heh heh," Rikku chuckled nervously. "You're joking, right?"

Paine gave her a look.

Rikku gulped and scuttled behind Yuna, looking over her cousin's shoulder worriedly.

"Hey," Yuna glanced around quickly. "Where did they go?"

The skinks had disappeared from where they left them.

They looked high and low for the fiends, splitting up to search for them. Just as Rikku was hanging upside down looking into a cave on the road to Djose, and Paine was torn between helping Rikku back to her feet and nudging the Al Bhed off the ledge, Yuna screamed for help.

The two made a world record for scrambling and reaching their friend's side. They halted with twin trails of dust behind them, staring as Yuna stumbled about, eyes blank and waving her gun from side to side.

"She's been Confused!" Rikku whispered to Paine, both hands clasped to her gun. She eyed the gun Yuna wielded warily, very well aware what a Confused person could do to the surrounding, unsuspecting victims.

"Whatever you do, don't attract her atten—Duck!" Paine exclaimed as she shoved Rikku down. Yuna began to shoot a chain of Level Three Trigger Happy's. The bullets went astray as the skinks slunk from the trio.

"This is bad this is bad this is bad!" Rikku stammered under her breath as she covered her head. "How do we knock her out of this?"

"Either wait it out or literally knock her out," Paine replied, flinching as a bullet landed dangerously close to her head. "Personally, I'm favoring option number two."

"But it's Yunie—aaah!" Rikku jerked closer to Paine as Yuna fired closer to the duo. "Okay, okay, let's hit her fast, but not too hard, okay?"

"Got it," Paine sped to the Confused woman, but skidded to a stop when Yuna aimed her gun in her direction.

"Yunie! Over here!" Rikku shouted, shooting her gun and garnering Yuna's attention.

This made Rikku highly unhappy, especially when Yuna proved to be an excellent shot and fired a bullet at Rikku's gun-hand. Yelping, Rikku dropped her gun and shook her burning hand.

This chaos gave Paine enough time to sneak up on Yuna and tap her (with some regret) on the head. Yuna collapsed to the ground, her head slowly rocking back and forth as she groaned, "What happened?"

"You were Confused by a skink, and shot Rikku," Paine replied, pointing. "Don't worry; it's not your fault."

"Okay!" Rikku picked up her gun warily and made her way to Yuna and Paine. "I say we don't change into the Gunner Dressphere anytime soon."

"Yeah," Yuna nodded. "Let's wait until we've got a better handle on this."

"And when you two stop aiming for the teammates," Paine added dryly.

"So, does that mean you're not going to shoot me?" Rikku asked imploringly, arms held akimbo.

Paine arched a brow at the blonde. "Let's just say I don't hold water with shooting comrades."

Rikku sighed her relief.

"But . . . even the best dam leaks from time to time."

The sigh quickly reversed into a whimper.

* * *

Not quite an excellent chapter, but this is simply the opening. There may be revisions to this later; I'll try todo so before I put up the second chapter. 


	2. Songstress

A/N: In order for this fic to work, there's going to be a bit of an AU-type situation regarding the dresspheres. The girls will have all of them (unless otherwise written, i.e., "the girls obtained the new dressphere from Shinra that he had been hoarding away for the past several months.") and all the skills will be learned–yes, even that damned 999 AP-required Elixir ability of the Alchemist (again, unless otherwise written). It'll kind of be as if the girls had experienced a New Game Plus; this will allow me to put the spheres in any order I want, and not have to stick to the game's chronology. Also, if any of the fiends don't actually perform the attack I say they do, I apologize. I didn't pay too much attention until late in the game, when this idea struck me; I might revise this later, when I have better access to the Internet and thus Gamefaqs.

I don't own Fall Out Boy's lyrics to "Dance Dance."I'm simply using them for the title.

* * *

**_Songstress--Dance, this is the way they'd love If they knew how misery loved me_**

"Alright, girls, we ready to try this again?" Rikku prompted, hoping to get her friends' spirits up.

After the fiasco on Djose, the sphere hunters had decided to try a different training ground to experiment with their dresspheres. They now roamed Kilika Island, ducking underneath trees and doing their best to ignore the Squatter Monkeys as they chattered loudly.

"Which one should we use?" Yuna asked, regarding her collection with an amazed eye–so many different abilities and outfits, if only they had had these on the pilgrimage! She muffled a laugh at the thought of the boys in a Gun Mage or Thief outfit, at least based on the preview Shinra offered them of the dresspheres.

"How about Dark Knight?" Paine suggested. "That sounds like it can kick ass."

"Ooh!" Rikku jumped up and down in excitement, picking one dressphere out of her own assortment. "Let's do the Songstress!"

"I don't know," Yuna hesitated; she had reservations about that dressphere, especially after the incident in Luca.

"C'mon, _please_?" Rikku begged, letting her eyes grow wide and teary in a puppy-dog face. "I wanna dance like Yunie did! Dance and sing and twirl in that cute outfit–"

Chuckling hesitantly, Yuna looked askance at Paine. The woman sighed, grumbling, "Fine. But next time, I get to choose the dressphere."

"Goody!" Rikku fit her dressphere into the slot on the Garment Grid, quickly changing into the Songstress. "This is going to be fun!"

"I can already feel the headache," Paine muttered to Yuna under her breath, following Rikku's example. Smiling vaguely, Yuna made the change to the familiar outfit of blue, purple, and silver.

Casting a wary glance around, Paine spotted three fiends zooming for them. Recalling from Shinra's massive fiend encyclopedia that the fiends were Assassin Bees, she told the others, "Here come our first victims."

Rikku clapped, grinning evilly as she swung her wand/microphone around wildly. "Then it's time to boogie down!"

"Let's show 'em what we got!" Yuna agreed fervently, catching Rikku's infectious enthusiasm.

Paine rolled her eyes and sighed. "This ought to be good."

They confronted the Bees head-on, making the fiends hover uncertainly. Yuna started the battle off with Jitterbug, Hasting the party to overcome the fiends quickly. Rikku followed up with an astounding Dirty Dancing number, and Paine finished with Darkness Dance.

And then . . . they did the same thing again.

And for a change of pace . . . they switched from "Dance" to "Sing."

"How long are we going to keep this up?" Paine asked tersely as she dodged a jab from a Bee, mostly thanks to the Evasion boost given by Rikku's Matador Song. "We're not doing anything but giving these fiends a good show."

"I . . . I didn't realize this was all that Songstress did," Yuna admitted as she finished her Jitterbug sequence, huffing greatly. Jitterbug helped them stay ahead of the fiends, but it took so much energy! "I thought . . . I thought there was an Attack ability we hadn't unlocked."

"Okay, uh, let's change our plans," Rikku suggested as her song came to an end. "Paine and I should switch to an attack, and Yunie you keep–aaah!"

An Assassin Bee landed a hit, in spite of Rikku's song. As she began to dim and brighten at slow intervals, the other two Assassin Bees did the same to Paine and Yuna, much to their dismay.

"What did they do?" Paine growled as she grew dim.

"I think this is Curse," Yuna gulped. "Try and spherechange–quickly!"

"Rightio!" Rikku agreed, and screwed her eyes shut in concentration. She opened them in panic, realizing she couldn't change at all. "This is so not good!"

"We're stuck in these outfits," Paine realized in horror.

"Rikku, try to use Sleepy Shuffle on them," Yuna ordered rapidly, trying to think of how to stay alive. "Paine, Cantus Firmus to raise our Defense in case Sleep fails."

Much to their chagrin, Rikku's Sleepy Shuffle did nothing but make the Bees pause in their attack. Desperate, Paine shouted out the one thing that came to her mind. "_Run_!"

Yelping and shouting, the trio turned and high-tailed it as fast as they could to the village on the island, as the Temple would have only turned them away with noses held high. As they stumbled and leapt over brambles and logs, Rikku exclaimed, "We really need to work on our strategies!"

The Assassin Bees hummed for a moment, and had the girls understood fiend-talk, they would have heard:

"That was a good song."

"Yes, it was. I liked the blonde one best; she seemed to have much more zest for her singing and dancing than the other two. Plus, didn't that tall one look kinda like that King of Rock and Roll from way back when, in Zanarkand? Not that Lenne person, but the Elvis guy."

"Hey! They're leaving! We better go after them; I haven't heard a song that cool since Macalania began to fade and the musicians stopped playing!"

And so the Bees gave chase, hot on the girls' heels all the way to the gates of the village.

* * *

I don't know if it's just me, but . . . does anyone else see Paine in Songstress and think, "Elvis?" Yeah, I thought it was just me . . . . 'cries at her insanity.' 


	3. Trainer

The lyrics directly after "Trainer" belong to Acceptance from "The Letter," and is not mine.

* * *

**_Trainer_**--**_So you're the one who took the fall And it's bringing us together._**

Leaving Kilika Island behind, the trio chose the area south of the Moonflow, where some of the easier fiends were found. And though Paine had decided before that she would choose their next dressphere, Yuna managed to convince Paine to try something less ominous-sounding than Dark Knight. In an attempt to preserve Yuna's peace of mind (and stop Rikku's annoying appeals for Alchemist—something that did not sound even _remotely_ dangerous) Paine selected Trainer.

The first few battles were simple and (herein lay the _very_ important part) without quandaries. Yuna's dog Kogoro, Rikku's monkey Ghiki, and Paine's pheasant Flurry obeyed perfunctorily, and there were plenty of benefits of using the animals, including their tremendous healing abilities. Yuna adored her pet, Rikku found Ghiki amusing, and Paine's initial doubts about her bird were quickly forgotten.

And then…Rikku discovered something new.

"Heey," Rikku giggled, checking the abilities of her pet. "That's something I didn't know before! 'Swarm, Swarm!' I wonder what that is?"

"I found a new ability, too," Yuna agreed. "It's called, 'Pound!' I wonder if they are the same ability? Paine, did you learn a new ability?"

Making a noise of confirmation, Paine recited, "'Maulwings!' Sounds like a serious attack."

"It does, doesn't it?" Yuna nodded, tapping a finger on her lower lip. "Maybe we should try them in the next battle."

They wandered for several minutes more, each pondering silently what their individual attacks were. Coming upon a Balivarha at long last, the girls summoned their respective pets and prepared for the fight.

"Kogoro," Yuna spoke to her pet, the dog listening attentively with pricked-forward ears. "Pound!"

"Ghiki, Swarm, Swarm!" Rikku told her chattering monkey as it clutched a handful of her hair.

"Maulwings, Flurry!" Paine commanded her bird, lifting her arm to allow the bird to spread her wings and fly.

The dog blinked, tilted his head to the side, and whined as his ears moved back and forward. The monkey continued to chatter, taking time to climb over Rikku's head to her other shoulder. Flurry smoothed out a stray feather, but did not take flight.

The girls paused. "Well, that's no good," Yuna gulped.

"C'mon, Ghiki, Swarm, Swarm!" Rikku pleaded. "You can do it! Swarm, Swarm!"

Paine stroked the breast of her bird, crooning, "Fly, Flurry. Maulwings!"

The animals still did not understand their masters' command. To prevent the Balivarha from killing them, Paine had Flurry use her regular attacks to kill the fiend. In the meantime, Yuna and Rikku tried talking with their pets.

Out of the three animals, Kogoro seemed to catch on first. His eyes lit up and his tail began to move in a wagging motion.

"Good boy," Yuna petted him. "You know what you're supposed to do when I say, Pound?"

Kogoro's ears continued to flatten and rise uncertainly, but he woofed softly. Turning to her monkey and Paine's Flurry, Rikku asked, "Can you guys watch Kogoro and do what he does?"

Ghiki waved his arms and chattered positively. Flurry gave one sharp dip of her head to show her concurrence.

"Good," Paine ran her fingers through the feathers, brushing out dander and loose feathers. "Because here come more fiends."

The animals trained their eyes on the approaching Agamas, determined to make their masters proud. Taking a breath, Yuna called, "Kogoro, Pound!"

Stepping forward, the dog howled. Suddenly six other dogs bounded into the area, yipping and growling. Barking a greeting, Kogoro turned and gave his owner a dog-smile.

"Good boy!" Yuna smiled widely.

"Do you see, Flurry?" Paine asked her pet. "Do like Kogoro. Maulwings!"

With a loud screech Flurry took off and, like Kogoro, summoned four other pheasants. Cheering her pet on, Rikku gave the command to her own pet and Ghiki summoned six of his friends.

The Agamas hesitated at the appearance of so many animals, but did not back down. Their tails swished back and forth, eyes blinking rapidly.

"Alright, Kogoro," Yuna returned to business, resting one fist on her hip as she used her other hand to direct the battle. "Pound!"

The barest moment of hesitation was the only warning Yuna received that something was amiss, but that moment was too short for her to capitalize on it. Instead of performing any sort of attack, Kogoro began to…dig. Taking their cues from their dearest friend, the other dogs began to dig into the ground as well. Some joined Kogoro in working on his hole; others worked in various spots.

"Maybe it's part of their attack?" Paine suggested to a confused Yuna. "Dig into the ground and come up underneath?" Turning to her own pet, she ordered, "Maulwings, Flurry!"

Having resettled on Paine's arm, Flurry turned one golden eye on her. She turned her head back to her wing and began to preen. The sound of the birds roosting in the trees and running their sharp beaks through their feathers filled the road.

"That doesn't look like an attack," Yuna pointed out worriedly.

"Aaaah!"

Yuna and Paine swiveled their heads sharply to Rikku. She had gone ahead and ordered Ghiki to attack, and the monkeys seemed to have had a better grasp of attacking than either Kogoro or Flurry. The only problem in their shrewdness was the fact that all the monkeys had converged upon Rikku herself. They could see Ghiki squalling loudly and attempting to pull off the monkeys from his master, but to no avail.

"Oh, Rikku!" Yuna gasped, rushing forward to help Ghiki. Paine did the same, swatting a monkey away and getting whacked in the face with three tails. Kogoro, hearing Yuna's distressed voice, stopped digging his seventh hole and circled Rikku, scaring the monkeys by barking and snapping his jaws.

In the panic of the attacking monkeys the girls had forgotten the three Agamas. The reptilian fiends slithered forward, intent on doing damage while they were distracted. Hissing, one surged forward—

—And toppled headlong into a hole.

The other two Agamas had followed their fellow fiend in its attack, but backpedaled furiously when their friend dropped from sight. One backed straight into a new hole dug by Kogoro's friends, and the last remaining Agama attempted to run away from the unexpected madness. Instead, as it turned around, it found the dogs had dug holes every which way right before falling into one itself.

Scaring away the monkeys from Rikku's form took several long minutes, but eventually the monkeys disappeared into the surrounding foliage. Flurry's friends also flew away, but Kogoro's friends were having far too much fun digging holes to leave immediately.

"Oooh," Rikku sighed heavily, falling onto her butt. "That was _so_ not fun! I can't believe they swarmed all over _me_!"

"Where did the fiends go?" Yuna sighed, shielding her eyes to look for the absent Agamas.

"It's probably better this way," Paine mentioned. "I don't know about you, but I think we could use a five-minute break."

The brunette slumped her shoulders and nodded agreeably. Receiving this assent, Paine began to walk back to the shoopuf-dock to rest. She took a few steps backwards before turning around (as per her walking habit), but as she rotated herself, she brought her right foot forward and felt nothing underneath.

Flinching as they heard their friend cry out and a loud _thump!_ following afterward, Yuna and Rikku twisted around to see what had tripped Paine. Peering over the edge of the hole, they found their friend lying on her back fifteen feet down in a hole that was at least twenty feet in diameter. Three dogs barked and nuzzled Paine while the remaining three looked upward and dog-smiled at them, plainly asking for praise for their hard work.

"Yuna," Rikku looked up at her cousin, one brow raised. "Do you think Kogoro would mind digging in Bikanel?"


End file.
